I know Matt said there isn't much point in doing this, considering we don't have the full script yet, merely Glenn Leopold's outline/pitch for it, similar in length and tone to (television's) Lance Falk's pitches for Blackout and Cold War, so this is effectively going to be a summary of a summary, but, eh, I've waited years for this, Dr. Viper fan that I am, and Matt didn't say not to, either, so let's end this run-on sentence and get down to the nitty-gritty of... The Doctors of Doom!

You can read the actual outline, or my rambling summation of it, or both!

We open with the stupidest gang of escaped criminals ever. These dopes (numbering four) have decided they're going to evade capture by hiding from the Enforcers in Megakat Swamp. At night. Despite encountering a three-eyed (but otherwise normal-sized) snake, obviously the result of some diabolical mad science experiment, the crooks are apparently unaware of "the legendary Dr. Viper" and that they've chosen to escape right into his neighborhood. Hmm, Dr. Viper's Neighborhood would make for an interesting show.

Seeing a light, they head toward it. It turns out to be coming from a window in Viper's big tree lair/fortress whatsit (last seen in The Giant Bacteria), and rather than taking one look at it and running the other way, the crooks, using broken-off branches as cudgels, decide to break into it.

Yes, these geniuses look at this...

...and decide it's a good idea to rob its owner. Even if they are somehow unaware of "the legendary Dr. Viper," does that look like the home of someone you want to rob? They must've escaped from the Megakat Prison For the Criminally Stupid.

Well, surprise, surprise, it ends very badly for them. Upon (somehow) breaking in (it doesn't look too accessible, except by that ladder), they still aren't clued in to whose home they've broken into even when they find "everything a mad scientist needs" laid out bubbling and churning on a big lab table. Seeing the form of someone sleeping on a cot, the crooks' leader goes to wake him up (why?) and is horrified when the sleeping figure he turns over turns out to be the Ci-Kat-A-ified Dr. Harley Street, with a wicked scar across his face, who promptly bites him. A second crook tries to whack Street with his branch cudgel but gets bitten, as well. They both turn into bug-eyed Ci-Kat-A drones under Street's command.

The other crooks turn to run but bump into Dr. Viper coming to see what all the noise is.

"Won't you be my neighbor?"

He knocks one guy aside with his tail and then grabs the other guy, as he and Street decide to monologue to this random burglar about just how they met. Hey, they gotta tell the story to someone! Cut to a flashback to the ending of The Ci-Kat-A."We Ci-Kat-As (?) would've ruled the world if it wasn't for those meddling SWAT Kats!" Street says in voiceover. And their puppy, too!

Is the very beginning of the episode really the best place for an extended flashback?

Anyway, "those meddling SWAT Kats" launched Street out of the Megakat Tower penthouse window with an Octopus Missile. Surprisingly, he didn't use his wings to fly away as we all thought he would've, and instead, despite not having them tied up like the queen did, he falls the entire 300 stories and smacks into the pavement. After prying the Octopus Missile loose from his face (resulting in the scars he now has), he finds a manhole and crawls into it, beaten and battered from the fall, ignored because of the final battle against the queen going on above. Recuperating in the sewer, he of course ran into Dr. V, who of course proposed an alliance, and the two went back to Viper's swamp lair, and Viper helped him recover from his fall, and that's how I met your mother--I mean how Street ended up coming to be Viper's roomie.

As Mac Mange would say, "End of story... end of you!" Not needing the final crook for exposition anymore, Street gives him and the other guy (who was knocked out when Viper smacked him aside) the ol' chompy-chomp, and they end up just like their two buddies.

So far, a pretty good beginning. I love the concept of someone stumbling across Viper's lair in the swamp by accident. But already problems are arising, as you can see. Putting the lengthy flashback here was a weird idea, as is the choice of character for Viper and Street to exposit to. This revelation of how Street survived and how the two met really should've come later and be said to the SWAT Kats or perhaps Felina or someone... anyone but this random (literally) nameless escaped criminal, right here at the beginning. And although I just said I liked the idea of someone accidentally stumbling onto Viper's lair, it boggles the mind that these guys have no idea who Viper is, or did they think they broke into someone else's giant tree fortress of doom? At the very least, the should've realized where they were when they saw all those bubbling beakers and retorts.

Oh well. Chalk up four Darwin Awards--Oh, wait, they're not dead, just turned half alien. But being unable to continue contributing to the kat gene pool anymore unless and until they're cured means they may as well have died, so they should get honorary Darwin Awards (do those exist?).

Next time: The SWAT Kats go rollerblading! Yes, really. Ah, the 90s.

Last edited by Kooshmeister on Fri Dec 08, 2017 2:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

Chance and Jake are rollerblading around an obstacle course of some kind in the salvage yard, propelled forward by turbo-charged rollerblades with jet thrust things built into the heels. I'll let that sink in. Not only is this one of the sillier ideas Glenn Leopold's ever come up with (even if it pales in comparison to half of what Falk gave us in Blowout!), I'm unsure if the rough, uneven terrain of the salvage yard is the best place for this. Like any skates, rollerblades are designed for flat, even surfaces like streets and sidewalks, not unpaved dirt. But the SWAT Kats wouldn't be the SWAT Kats if they didn't do pointlessly dangerous things for fun, now, would they? So. They're rollerblading around the salvage yard obstacle course and that's all there is to it.

This sequence really doesn't surprise me, though, I guess, because like everything Chance and Jake do together, it's a competition. A race in this case. Describing the "turbo roller blades" as radical, Chance enthuses that they've given him another way to beat Jake. Hmm. Methinks Chance's (or perhaps Glenn Leopold's) memory isn't so good. Except for the centrifuge contest in The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice, Jake has won, or come close to winning, most of the contests he and Chance have held together: he "won" the pepper-eating contest in The Wrath of Dark Kat because he was a dirty rotten cheater, he was outdistancing his opponent even before Chance fell in the water and started drowning in Mutation City, and he won in the reflex room in The Origin of Dr. Viper because T-Bone "killed" Manx, getting an automatic game over (although T-Bone demanded, and got, a rematch, we didn't see the results). So Chance's history in competition with Jake isn't too good. Although maybe he's just really riding the two centrifuge wins for all they're worth, which is a very Chance thing to do.

Anyway, back to rollerblading SWAT Kats. The duo perform some "extreme" type stunts and Jake takes the lead (see?). Angered, Chance rather stupidly decides to push his skates to the limit by making them go faster and faster, using a handheld control device (in case you were wondering how our boys were controlling these things). This ends about as you'd expect; badly. But how it ends is rather cartoony, with Chance's skate-clad feet sinking into the earth, leaving long skid trenches, the wheels breaking off. Upon extracting his feet, he realizes they're smoking because the rollerblade engines have overheated, so he plunges his feet into a big barrel full of water - which is said to be for drinking; don't these guys have a cooler, or bottled water? What do they do? Ladle the water out?

Skating over, Jake complains about Chance ruining their drinking water (again, why are they drinking from from a barrel? Or is this just for cooldowns between obstacle course runs?), while Chance tells him they really need to reinforce the "roller" part of the rollerblades to withstand the jets' power so the wheels won't break off.

And with that crucial scene out of the water, we cut to Megakat Biochemical Labs. Here we find Abel--sorry, I mean Emil on duty at the front desk. Yes, I went back and rewatched The Origin of Dr. Viper, and Zyme does in fact say "Emil," although he pronounces it weird. And how is this old idiot still employed here? He should've been fired for basically letting Dr. Viper walk right in through the front door because he had his nose buried in a comic book. I thought the point of Emil in that episode was to show that (the omnipresent artillery cannons notwithstanding), Megakat Biochemical's security was really lax in the innocent pre-Viper days, but this doofus is still working there, and not just as a guard, but the one at the front desk! And he's reading comics again! Aaghhhh!

At least he's a little more active this time when inevitably his reading is interrupted as Dr. Street, accompanied by the four converted prisoners, enters. One mutant snake-person I guess can go unnoticed. But half kat, half alien miscreants? That's something even Emil can't overlook. Although maybe it's because they're constantly making buzzing noises. Stealthy, Ci-Kat-A are not. Emil tries to draw his laser pistol, but the former prisoners pin him against the wall mid-draw with their sticky yellow cocoon puke (the first indication that Ci-Kat-A converted from kats can do this; previously only "normal" Ci-Kat-A did it).

Visual approximation.

Instead of converting him, the five just kind of leave him there and head upstairs to a top secret room with a reinforced door, which they rip open, unknowingly triggering a silent alarm.

Said alarm is detected by Felina Feral, who is on her first mission with a new partner, Gray Taylor. He's a cocky rookie type who graduated top of his class at "the academy" and either has "potentially interesting new supporting character" or "expendable meat" written all over him. Some backstory about his grandfather used to fly a cropduster suggests the former. It's too soon to tell. We do see he's a bit of a reckless flier. As they head toward the lab, he buzzes the Kat's Eye News chopper, which turns around and follows them because Ann Gora being Ann Gora sees an Enforcer chopper heading somewhere in a hurt and her story-senses start tingling. Weirdly, although Jonny is of course described as riding in the chopper with her, there's no mention of Al, the guy supposedly doing all the flying. Instead it's all "the news chopper does this" and "the news chopper does that," as if the helicopter itself were a character, with poor Al completely neglected after a few minor season one appearances.

Felina doesn't want nosy Ann following them, but Taylor assures her he can lose them. Felina is described as being incredulous that "this hot dog" (what?) got such high marks back at the academy. I'm unsure if this means she likes him or not. Oh well.

Back in the top secret room in Megakat Biochemical, Street searches among some beakers and finds one labelled "Super-Katalyst S66," which is what they've come for. Somehow, he grins, despite having a "mouth" that amounts to a pair of pincher type mandibles with no visible orifice like all Ci-Kat-A, making it look like he's wearing a Groucho Marx mustache. Suddenly Felina and Taylor burst in with laser pistols drawn, and do their hold-it-right-there routine (we're given no indication if they found and helped Emil). Having had no direct experience with Ci-Kat-A, Felina is shocked and hesitates at Street's appearance, allowing two of the converted prisoners to get the drop on her and Taylor. Literally. They were clinging to the ceiling and leap down. Leopold is unclear how far along in their transformation these guys are, but I do know they don't have wings like Street does yet.

Impressively, Felina and Taylor manage to flip the two prisoners off of themselves, but one's mandibles (okay, so that's how far along they are) tears Taylor's uniform sleeve. Gasp! It's unclear if he was successfully bitten enough to convert him yet, so he's still hovering between "new character" and "expendable sap" at this point. Since he doesn't immediately turn into a bug-eyed drone, though, assuring Felina it's "just a scratch," he might just be okay. Overeager, Taylor prepares to open fire on the Ci-Kat-A, but Felina prevents him, telling him he could hit the highly-explosive stores of chemicals and blow them all up. First, don't say that out loud and give Street ideas, and secondly, if you were worried about that, why did you come rushing in with gun drawn mere moments ago, huh, Lieutenant?

And remember when she suddenly knew martial arts and drop-kicked the transformed Laszlo in his gargoyle form into the water in Succubus!? She shows some more such skills as she karate chops one of the converted prisoners, knocking him aside. He goes flying and smacks face-first into the big windows of the lab (why are all the windows in this place floor-to-ceiling?). He fails to smash through it, though. I'd say it's because the windows are made of armored glass, but the show has always been maddeningly inconsistent about how easy the Megakat Biochemical windows are to break - despite Zyme's claims, we've seen the bacteria monster's hand smash through after barely touching the glass, a lightweight Creepling and some ordinary cement slugs went flying through it surprisingly easily. So you'd think this guy would, too. But alas. He just comically "smushes" against it and slides down the glass.

Visual approximation #2.

And the prisoner hitting the glass allows us to transition to the exterior where it turns out Taylor totally failed to lose the Kat's Eye News chopper (we may not see him, but Al is a great pilot if he can successfully keep up with an Enforcer chopper). Jonny films out the open side door. The live footage is shown on the TV in the garage where Jake is repairing Chance's rollerblades, attacking new wheels. Upon seeing the Ci-Kat-A through the lab window on TV, they realize the "bug infestation" isn't over. Shouldn't they have already realized that, with Street having been unaccounted for at the end of The Ci-Kat-A? And I guess Chance really did conquer his bug phobia, because not only did he handle the scorpions in Caverns of Horror with nary a peep about his fears, but he isn't freaking out that the Ci-Kat-A are back (kinda - there's no more "natural" ones, just converted kats).

Anyway, he and Jake suit up, hop into the Turbokat and fly off to exterminate Street once and for all! Tune in next time!

Last edited by Kooshmeister on Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:06 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Back at the lab, Felina uses a microscope to clobber one of the Ci-Kat-A-ified prisoners, and the thing smacks her into a big shelf, which collapses onto her and Taylor, pinning them. As the Ci-Kat-A approach, with Street giving his "soon you'll be one of us" type speeches, when suddenly the SWAT Kats swing down outside the window, firing Turbo Blades (I'm sure Leopold meant Mini Turbo Blades) through the glass to smash it.

"'Practically indestructible,' my left foot! I got gypped by that armored glass salesman!"

T-Bone finally gets a taste of what poor Razor experienced last time as Street vomits cocoon puke all over him (I always said it really should've been the phobic T-Bone, not Razor, who should've been cocooned in The Ci-Kat-A), and as he's about to get bitten, Razor "karate kicks" Street away (with a "Hyaahh!" of course). If Street is still holding the beaker of Super-Katalyst S66 throughout all of this, I sure hope it's got a lid. Otherwise that stuff is just sloshing all over the place. Using a claw (!), Razor slices his partner free of the cocoon sludge. T-Bone calls back to the last time he touched this stuff by remarking on how nasty it is and how much he hates it. After saving Felina and Taylor from being bitten, too, the SWAT Kats pull the shelf off of the two Enforcers, and what they do next is a little difficult to follow. It seems as though they heave the shelf at the converted prisoner Ci-Kat-A, who bite through it, and then just fire "Glovatrix blasts" (do the Glovatrixes have built-in machine guns, now?) at them instead.

Taking a cue from his ally Dr. Viper (or because he overheard what Felina said earlier), Street grabs some beakers of highly explosive chemicals (helpfully labelled as such so he, an astronomer and not a biochemist, can realize what their contents are) and throws them. They do what highly explosive chemicals do best and highly explode. The blast knocks T-Bone and Razor into Felina and Taylor and all four go crashing down. It turns out, no, Street has not been holding Super-Katalyst S66 this entire time, he just set it down at some point and (AFAIK) Leopold forgot to mention it. Now he grabs it and flies out the broken window with it.

The SWAT Kats give chase using their Delta Bak Paks. Felina and Taylor chase off the remaining converted kats, and, running to the window, Felina helpfully yells at the departing SWAT Kats not to let Street escape. Thanks, Lieutenant.

A few Enforcer choppers show up (who called them? Are they, too, reacting to the silent alarm?), but Street gums up their rotor blades using his puke and flies on unimpeded. They're described as veering off, their fates unknown as Leopold forgets to describe them crashing. Dr. Viper awaits his alien ally on the roof of a warehouse and Street flies down, handing him the katalyst he stole. Observing as they fly towards them, our heroes conclude the obvious, that Viper and Street are working together. They're always the last ones to know about villain teamups. "Let's capture these doctors of doom!" Razor title-drops as he and T-Bone launch Mini Spider Missiles at the pair. But it turns out that although Viper may have been returned to his normal state (for a given definition of "normal") by the anti-mutagen blast in Mutation City, a few of the new abilities Katalyst X-63 gave him remain, as he spews acid from underneath his fingernails (!!!) again, melting the incoming missiles.

Veering to avoid getting hit with the acid, too, the SWAT Kats are easy prey for Street, who takes them by surprise and does his puke thing. It turns out Delta Pak Baks are powered kind jet engine things, and his Ci-Kat-A vomit clogs up the air intakes, causing the two vigilantes to drop out of the sky. Laughing, Viper and Street hastily exit stage left, as our falling heroes hear the sound of approaching rotor blades: it's an Enforcer chopper, and not just any Enforcer chopper, but Felina and Taylor's. Launching grappling hooks from their Glovatrixes, they grab ahold of the passing helicopter and catch a free ride.

Visual approximation #3.

Taylor is piloting, and Felina tells him to hold the controls steady. Suddenly, though, he turns around in his seat, revealing insectoid compound eyes. He's been turned into a kat-Ci-Kat-A drone! Wow, that nick the prisoner gave him must've been really minor for the effects of the transformation to take this long. Welp, this puts Taylor firmly into the "expendable meat" category now, since, going by The Ci-Kat-A, once someone is bitten and turned into a bug-eyed drone, they're pretty much a gone goose and no attempt is made to help or cure them. Unless, of course, this episode is going to address that issue. I mean, they wouldn't give us a new, named Enforcer character just to write him off, would they? Maybe this is like Chaos In Crystal, where you knew they'd cure all the crystallized people once a character we're supposed to care about like Manx got turned to crystal and didn't shatter. Taylor, being Felina's likable new partner, should thus be the impetus for the heroes to find a cure for Street and the other Ci-Kat-A-ified kats.

And, wow, Taylor's already got bug mandibles! Glenn Leopold really did forget how long it took for a bitten kat to develop certain Ci-Kat-A features and abilities, didn't he? They're supposed to go through different stages. And it took Street at least a day and night to develop the mandibles. But now Taylor's already got the chompy parts so he can attack Felina (leaving nobody flying the helicopter in the process) and potentially bite her. I guess his body is speeding the transformation up to make up for how long it took for the bite to start affecting him.

Felina escapes from her transformed partner by... jumping out the open side door of the out-of-control chopper. What?

Yeah, she's grabbed by T-Bone as she falls (he and Razor are still hanging on to the bottom), but, wow, that was a dumb move, there, Lieutenant. You could've thrown Taylor out instead, or karate-chopped him unconscious, or, well, anything but basically leap to your potential death hoping (I guess) that you'd be grabbed on the way down. Did she even know the SWAT Kats were hanging on down there? Leopold isn't clear whether them hanging on is why Felina told Taylor to fly steadily. If she didn't know they were down there before jumping, she's an idiot who just randomly chose death over being turned into a Ci-Kat-A, and if she did know they were down there, she's an idiot for hoping she'd be caught as she fell. Either way, so far, this is the dumbest sequence.

...and did anyone free Emil? Or is he still plastered to the wall back at the lab? Oh well.

Stay tuned to find out how our heroes get out of this jam. Or just read the actual plot outline Matt linked to above.

Last edited by Kooshmeister on Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I mustn't lose steam! I must chug forward like an out-of-control Fear Train!

So after Felina leaped out of the Enforcer chopper and was caught by T-Bone who along with Razor is dangling by the aircraft's undercarriage like Liam Neeson in Darkman (see pic above), the converted Taylor leans out and uses his claws (he really is a lot further along in his transformation than he ought to be) to cut the cables holding the heroes and the Enforcer lieutenant up. Now why didn't Durant think of that in Darkman? Also, Taylor taking the time to poke out and slice the cables means the chopper still isn't being flown by anyone and is probably on its way to crashing violently into something.

As they're falling, Razor suggests they use their "Max Bak-Bak thrusters" to blow the Ci-Kat-A cocoon puke out of their intakes. This works, of course, saving the three from becoming street pizza. Meanwhile, Taylor has retaken control of the chopper before it crashed, and he circles around and shoots at them. Firing Buzzsaw Blades from their Glovatrixes, they hit the rotor section, severing it from the rest of the chopper. Another Enforcer helicopter bites the big one (and it was doing so well up until now) and crashlands in the... swamp? What? When did the chase suddenly make it out of the city and into Megakat Swamp? Only a few paragraphs ago, Street was handing the stolen goods over to Viper on top of a warehouse roof, now suddenly the helicopter is nosediving into the swamp. I know this is just an outline, Glenn, but something like "the chase proceeds out of the city towards the swamp" would've been helpful.

The SWAT Kats are running out of fuel for their Bak Paks (after that short chase? I guess blowing out the Ci-Kat-A gunk used up a lot of fuel), but they and Felina, who T-Bone is still carrying, are saved by the arrival of the Kat's Eye News chopper, which had been following the pursuit. They're of course allowed aboard. Ann is full of questions, and our heroes are of course forthcoming with answers. What they don't do is attempt to have Al land in the swamp using the news chopper's pontoons so they can go see if Taylor survived the crash or not, and either kill him or capture him. Anything but just go without checking. But this wouldn't be the last time they just assumed an enemy was toast and left without checking. Which means they really are writing Taylor off as a hopeless case, including Felina, who, knowing nothing about Ci-Kat-A, really should be insisting they apprehend her converted partner and try to cure him. But, nope, like everyone else bitten by a Ci-Kat-A, Taylor is just assumed to be beyond hope.

I'd get mad at the waste of a potentially interesting character in Taylor, but Glenn Leopold has done this before, so it isn't surprising enough for me to get mad at. Especially since Taylor being written off so casually still isn't the worst thing in this episode, which is about to outdo The Giant Bacteria for how cruelly and disturbingly Dr. Viper screws over his "allies." If you thought what he did to Morbulus was bad, wow, wait'll you see how he screws Street and the other converted kat-Ci-Kat-A over!

So we cut back to Viper's tree lair where he's using Super-Katalyst S66 to mix up some kind of "nasty looking formula." Street and the other converted kats, including Taylor, who survived the crash and found his way here, I guess using the Ci-Kat-A hive mind, are waiting impatiently nearby. Well, Street is, anyway. Remember, he's the only one with any true autonomy, I guess because along with the mustached MASA guard (who is either dead or imprisoned somewhere), he was the only kat ever personally bitten by the queen. Anyway, Street believes that by stealing the katalyst he has repaid his debt to Viper to helping him earlier, and wants to get on with the "take over the world" plot, but Viper drops a bombshell... it turns out that (big surprise) he hasn't been entirely honest with his ally.

Instead of helping the Ci-Kat-A take over the world, he plans to use the katalyst they stole for him as part of his plan to destroy Megakat City and rebuild it as "Viper City," his third name for his fantasy swamp city so far. Street is understandably confused and pissed, insisting the evil biochemist abide by their agreement. (Why can't they do both? Street wants the world, Viper only wants the city. You'd think they'd find a workable compromise.)

Why doesn't he just bite this guy? Is Viper conversion-proof? In fact, you'd think Street would've bitten Viper and turned him into a kat-snake-Ci-Kat-A drone under his command and used his biochemical expertise that way a long time ago, but Leopold never addresses why Street never did this. Out of simple gratitude for saving him? If so, Street is a far more honorable villain than Viper is, as we've seen before and are about to be gruesomely reminded of momentarily, as Viper, tired of arguing with his fellow mad scientist about who is in charge, just throws some knockout gas into the midst of the assembled Ci-Kat-A, causing them to become woozy and start collapsing. With an eyedropper full of the stuff he just got done mixing up, Viper is described as "slinking" towards the gradually blacking out Street in a scene that plays out almost like impending date rape.

Visual approximation #4.

Protip: as if we needed any more evidence... never, ever trust Viper or ally oneself with him!

What vile thing does Viper have planned now that he's betrayed his allies? What ghastly fate is in store for Dr. Street and co.? Tune in next time (or read the summary)!

I gotta say, this is where the episode loses me. Honestly, Street should've betrayed Viper, not the other way around. Street, armed with his bite capable of converting people into drones and backed by five flunkies, was really holding all the cards. And Viper's actual plan, which we'll learn next time, sounds more like something the Ci-Kat-A ought to be doing, and is in fact not only grotesquely at odds with Viper's plan to turn the city into a swamp, but would actually be self-defeating. As it is, Viper doublecrossing Street is just too similar to his betrayal and mutation of Morbulus in The Giant Bacteria. It makes it seem like Glenn Leopold is just being lazy and recycling ideas (rather similar to how his Turmoil 2 script was in some places just the same events from Cry Turmoil but on a much grander scale).

Kooshmeister wrote:Viper doublecrossing Street is just too similar to his betrayal and mutation of Morbulus in The Giant Bacteria. It makes it seem like Glenn Leopold is just being lazy and recycling ideas (rather similar to how his Turmoil 2 script was in some places just the same events from Cry Turmoil but on a much grander scale).

Totally agree. I was saving my comments for the end of Koosh's recap, but I might as well say this now: Glenn Leopold recycles so many ideas in "Doctors of Doom" that he should have submitted it to Captain Planet. (Koosh didn't mention the Scream Discretion Shot when Dr. Street bites the last prisoner, which Leopold had used twice already. And there's a scene in the forthcoming segment... well, you'll know it when you see it.) As for the two new elements Leopold introduces, poor Gray Taylor gets zombified practically as soon as we meet him, and if I want to see a good cartoon with rollerblading in it, I'll watch Paranoia Agent. "DoD" is a disappointment coming from a writer who is capable of so much better. In fact, all three unfinished episodes have so many plot holes and abrupt scene transitions that I wonder if Leopold was rushing to meet deadlines when he wrote them.

marklungo wrote:In fact, all three unfinished episodes have so many plot holes and abrupt scene transitions that I wonder if Leopold was rushing to meet deadlines when he wrote them.

That said, I do think Succubus! and Turmoil 2 are quite good, for all their shortcomings. And not just in comparison to The Doctors of Doom; I mean they would've honestly been good episodes. Are good episodes, assuming we're now taking them as semi-canon (enough that Succubus! has an episode entry on the Encyclopedia and Turmoil 2 should soon too).

There's good ideas and good execution of them, showcasing Leopold's abilities as a writer.

Maybe we're being a little unfair to Leopold and Doctors of Doom. This is just the outline. I mean, don't Falk's outlines for Blackout and Cold War sound kinda doofy at times? Maybe once we finally see the final script for Doctors of Doom - assuming it was written before the cancellation, and at this point I'm a little scared it never was - it'll come off better. But unless Leopold changed a lot from outline to finished script, Doctors of Doom is definitely doomed (no pun intended) to be the weakest of the three unfinished episodes... and would've probably been the weakest season two episode overall. Because as much as people crap on Volcanus Erupts!, at least it flowed smoothly.

But outline or not, it's still a hot mess and I'm going to continue treating it as such in my summary.

I'm just amazed at how much I don't like it. I mean, I don't hate it... but it's my least favorite of the three fabled unfinished episodes. I honestly am surprised I prefer the two non-Viper scripts, when this is the one I've been waiting for since 1997. It isn't terrible, but it is uneven, clunky (even compared to Falk's equally bizarre outlines) a huge letdown.

After Viper's sudden (but inevitable) betrayal of his Ci-Kat-A companions, we cut back to the salvage yard, where Jake is finishing work on repairing Chance's rollerblades. No checking the crashed Enforcer chopper for Taylor. No searching the swamp where it landed for Viper's hideout. No checking back with the staff of Megakat Biochemical to find out just what it is Street stole. No. It's back to the salvage yard to fix Chance's busted skates from earlier. Because priorities!

Chance is zooming around on his newly-repaired rollerblades as Jake aims a radar gun at him. With the reinforced wheels, the jet-boosters built into the skates are allowing Chance to top out at 120 MPH without burning out and having the wheels pop off. But there's no end of problems to fix, as, when Chance attempts to stop, it turns out the brakes aren't terribly responsive and he ends up crashing into the wall. He hits it so hard he bounces off of it (!) and flies backward to land in the dirt. Presumably the jets on his skates have shut off, too, otherwise once landing on his back, his legs would fly up and he'd just keep flipping over and over across the salvage yard like a furry tumbleweed.

Getting up, he realizes he's covered in ants. A teensy bit of his earlier bug phobia returns, but he manages to calmly brush them off, complaining, "Darn bugs."

"Speaking of bugs," says Jake (with nary an "Are you okay?" after Chance's 120 MPH face plant), "There's been no sign of Dr. Street since he and Viper disappeared weeks ago."

And this is what you guys have been doing since then? Fixing jet-powered rollerblades and not searching the swamp for Viper's hideout?

Jake's line about "those two slimeballs" possibly "hatching something nasty" leads us to cut back to Viper's lair, where something nasty is indeed hatching. Or about to, anyway. Inside the lair are six cocoons.

Visual approximation #5.

Five are white, the sixth is black. As Viper walks in, they hatch open to reveal that Viper has used his Super-Katalyst S66-based formula to turn the six unfortunate Ci-Kat-A into giant mutant insects. Street is now a giant, armored black scarab beetle, while Taylor and the four prisoners are, ick, huge white grub worms. Boy, oh, boy, did Dr. Street get royally screwed over. Bitten by an alien queen and turned into a half kat, half alien insect hybrid, and now Viper has mutated him and his pals even further into twisted mockeries of the insect kingdom.

Street didn't deserve this. The episode treats him like a villain when he was always just an innocent astronomer who got bitten. And poor Taylor! And, heck, I don't care what those four escaped prisoners did, they didn't deserve this. But, then, I guess, neither did Morbulus... so this just goes to show how much of a twisted sicko Viper is. I always felt like they toned down his sadism after his debut episode (he's downright comical at times in Destructive Nature), and, if nothing else, Doctors of Doom is reminding us why he's such an utterly evil, dangerous wacko, and would've represented a return to form for him that was sorely lacking in his appearances post-Giant Bacteria.

Also, it shows how skilled a scientist Viper is. Not everyone can muck about with alien DNA and body chemistry so easily.

Addressing his six new creations, Viper explains firstly that he's genetically altered them to obey his commands, as if to address earlier concerns about why his creatures (particularly the bacteria monster, made from a guy with every reason to want revenge, just like these six) listen to him. Like Morbulus before them, Street, Taylor and the other Ci-Kat-A have been transformed physically and mentally to such a point that their characters no longer exist as such, so I'm just going to cal them "the scarab" and "the grub worms."

And now we get to Viper's evil scheme. According to him, the newly-transformed bug monsters are "perfect for digging," and he's going to have them tunnel their way into the "Megakat Thermonuclear Plant" (since it's mentioned as residing by the bay, I'm pretty sure Leopold just means the regular nuclear power plant we've already seen several times before), where they'll break into the reactor, causing it to melt down and "totally contaminate Megakat City, turning it into a nuclear wasteland."

Words cannot describe how dumb this is. Later, Viper will explain that after the meltdown wipes out Megakat City, he can begin building his swamp city where the old city once stood, so he's basically copying Dark Kat's debut scheme.

Clearly Leopold is going for some kind of Chernobyl-type scenario wherein Viper will repopulate the city with nuclear mutants, but this seems slightly out of character for a villain who's relied in purely biochemistry-based evil schemes up to this point.And what about Viper himself? Surely Megakat Swamp is within the potential contanimation zone. Is he immune to radiation just like's apparently immune to Ci-Kat-A bites? If that's the case, then the way he just so easily one-ups Street despite the latter holding all the cards, Viper's coming off a little Gary Stu-ish. I think I know who Glenn Leopold's favorite villain is.

And now Viper going for an evil plan that makes no sense even for him.

This is what I meant when I said it would've made more sense for Street to betray Viper. Since Ci-Kat-A eat radioactive material, turning the entire city radioactive would mean an endless supply of food for them. But whatever. Point being, Viper is a doublecrossing creep and the Ci-Kat-A have all been turned into his mindlessly obedient slaves. They head off to carry out his idiotic scheme.

Cut to the subway. Uh-oh. The armored grub worms dig out through the side of the tunnel in front of an oncoming train, and the motorman (Leopold calls him a "driver," which is still technically accurate; at least he didn't call him a conductor - protip: conductors don't drive the trains) hits the brakes. Even though the train successfully stops without hurting them, the grubs still feel the need to spit acid at it, melting the windshield. The passengers all scream, but they still fare better than their predecessors in The Giant Bacteria, as, acid spit aside, the grubs are uninterested in the train and ignore it, continuing on down the tunnel. No word on whether the windshield-melting acid hurt or killed the motorman, though.

Up top, skyscrapers collapse into the ground due to the tunnels the grubs are digging underneath them, calling to mind (television's) Lance Falk's outline for Blackout, where an underground villain was using a gravity weapon to "suck" buildings (primarily power stations, hence the title) down into the earth. As for an Enforcer involvement beyond Felina and Taylor's not terribly impressive showing back at Megakat Biochemical Labs, Akane will be furious to learn that their efforts to combat the giant bugs and prevent more buildings from being pulled underground amount to "The Enforcers are helpless."

"Thanks, Glenn."

Without being told how they were alerted to the problem (Callie? The news?), the SWAT Kays head underground in the Turbo Mole, rebuilt after being chucked into the excavator and blown to bits in Caverns of Horror, and, driving through the subway, follow the bugs' slime trail (eeeew). Will they get to the nuclear power plant in time to avert disaster? Tune in next time for the final entry into my summary of this, um, summary!

Last edited by Kooshmeister on Mon Dec 11, 2017 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kooshmeister wrote:the Ci-Kat-A have all been turned into his mindlessly obedient slaves.

Between this and Turmoil's Crown of Obedience, there's a lot of that going around in the unfinished episodes.

Kooshmeister wrote:but they still fare better than their predecessors in The Giant Bacteria

Of course, this is the scene I was referring to earlier. Honestly, DoD is like a Frankenstein's monster made of scenes and concepts from previous episodes. There's nothing wrong with the premise; it's just that the execution leaves a lot to be desired.